Clay Clark | The Power of Self Evaluation

Audio Transcription

So many different times in my life, I’ve played with broken or hurt things. Broken foot, broken leg, broken hand, broken arm, broken sternum, broken collarbone. I could keep going if I just thought more about bones. Why, man? Because I loved it. I loved playing the game. I was passionate about it. One of the reasons I even get encouraged at seeing all of you here, you know why I get encouraged by that is because you could be anywhere doing a lot of different things, but you chose to be here Some shows don’t need a celebrity narrator to introduce the show But this show does in a world filled with endless opportunities Why would two men who have built 13 multi-million dollar businesses? five hours per day to teach you the best practice business systems and moves that you can use. Because they believe in you. And they have a lot of time on their hands. This started from the bottom, now they’re here. It’s the Thrive Time Show starring the former U.S. Small Business Administration’s Entrepreneur of the Year, Clay Clark, and the entrepreneur trapped inside an optometrist’s body. Dr. Robert Zulman. Two men, eight kids, co-created by two different women. Thirteen multi-million dollar businesses. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and we’ll show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, now we’re here. We started from the bottom, and now we’re at the top Teaching you the systems to get what we got Colton Dixon’s on the hoops, I break down the books Z’s bringing some wisdom and the good looks As a father of five, that’s why I’m alive So if you see my wife and kids, please tell them hi It’s the CNC, up on your radio And now, 3, 2, 1, here we go! Started from the bottom, now we’re here Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, let me show you how to get here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Started from the bottom, now we’re here. Alright, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. It’s your daily dojo of mojo, and this is the show where we keep you in the know about what you need to know and do to make your business grow. You know, I know there’s so many people out there that unfortunately are listening to today’s show, representing some of the unfavorable statistics that are out there. According to Forbes, 8 out of 10 small businesses are going to fail. According to Inc. Magazine, over 96% of small businesses are going to fail. According to the people that I’ve met, just anecdotally, people that I’ve met over the years who have been friends of mine, who have started businesses, I’ve seen almost all of them go out of business. There are reasons to have hope. You shouldn’t be discouraged by the statistics. You just have to know that when you’re trying to be successful in the world of business, I’ll liken it to trying to climb to the top of a mountain. Let’s just say there’s a mountain that you want to get to the top of, and you can see it in the distance. We’ve all definitely agreed that this is the mountain that we want to get to the top of. However, just to make it exciting, what you do is you go ahead and put on a blindfold. And the blindfold, I would call it, is ignorance or lack of knowledge or not knowing the proven path, but basically you don’t know where to go. And so what happens is you, with great passion, with great energy, with great enthusiasm, you work hard to get up to the top of the mountain, but you have the blindfold of ignorance or lack of knowledge on. You’re trying to get to the top of Google without knowing how to do it. You’re trying to optimize your marketing pieces. You’re trying to make more effective ads, but you don’t know how to do it. You’re trying to systemize your business, but you don’t know how to do it. And as a business coach, and somebody who’s been coaching businesses for a very long time, I unfortunately will say that college does not prepare you to be a successful business owner. There are many dentists that we work with. Specifically, I can think of one in Florida that I’m working with right now that he said this openly, but he said, hey, listen, before I had your business coaching, I had no clue where I was going. You know, the college didn’t prepare me at all for running a business. They taught me how to be a good dentist. They taught me the technical aspects of becoming a dentist, of getting that degree, getting that license, getting that certification, but they didn’t prepare me. And so what’s happening is you are trying to make it up Success Mountain with a blindfold on and it’s very hard to do that. And so you shouldn’t beat yourself up if you have been going the wrong way because if you’re passionate, you might be walking fast. You might be walking quickly. You might be moving at a rapid pace. You’re jogging. You might be sprinting, depending upon how athletic you are. Who knows? You might be doing a marathon jog. You’re going at a world record pace the wrong way. And so what I’m saying today is, let’s just take a moment. Let’s get out a sheet of paper. And let’s rate ourselves on the scale of 1 to 10 on a couple areas today. Let’s work through them together and let’s make sure that we are being honest with ourselves of how we’re doing. Are we truly getting to where we want to go? So we’re going to start with a fun, but what’s fun because it’s a you know a lot of people want to talk about it, but I don’t know if it’s fun for some people. Maybe a third of you say this is not fun at all, but we’re going to go ahead and rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. Go ahead and get out a sheet of paper and rate yourself. Get out a sheet of paper, of paper. Rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in the area of marketing. 10 being the highest, 1 being the least. Marketing. Marketing being your ability to generate leads in a turnkey way. Again, your ability to generate leads in a turnkey way. So let me give you some examples of what is not a turnkey way. Not a turnkey is you going around town networking. That is not a turnkey way. You personally texting or Facebooking, reaching out to people via Facebook that you know, that’s not a turnkey way. What you’re looking to do is you’re looking to build a business that could work without you. Right? I mean, so, you know, you want to be thinking about, you know, how good am I at building a turnkey marketing system that really does work without me? So let me give you some examples of what would, how one would work here. Elephant in the Room, that’s our men’s grooming lounge, we get customers in a turnkey way that requires zero of my physical time. I don’t have to do anything during the week to go get the customers. Now I do, I did have to design the marketing materials. I did have to think about the strategy. I did have to devote many, many hours to coming up with the original system, but I no longer have to go get them myself. As another example, Dr. Zellner and Associates, the top optometry clinic in Tulsa, according to the sales totals. These guys, Dr. Z, you won’t see Dr. Z running around, passing around his business card, trying to procure new business. You won’t see him networking around town, passing out cards, but you will see people going to his business located right there at 65th and Memorial, I believe, right there next to the Woodland Hills Mall. So again, on a scale of 1 to 10, I want you to rank your ability to get customers without personally going after them. You know, Michael Gerber, he’s the best-selling author of the book E-Myth. There’s the E-Myth book series where they basically teach you that there’s a myth that because you’re good at, let’s say, making cakes, you’ll be good at running a bakery. Because you’re good at actually plumbing, you’ll be good at becoming a plumber. Because you’re good at selling life insurance, you’re going to be good as the owner of a financial planning company. Because you’re a good dentist, you’ll be great at running a dentistry. And that’s the myth. That’s the fallacy. So he says in his book, he says, most entrepreneurs are merely technicians. With an entrepreneurial seizure, most entrepreneurs fail because you’re working in your business rather than on your business. So for the elephant in the room, as an example, we go out there and get customers in a turnkey way that doesn’t require my time. So let’s talk about it. One is we have created a mailer that generates a response. Mailers? You mean in this time and place in American history you’re going to do a mailer? You’re going to mail something? Somebody might be saying to themselves, I would never open the mail at all. I haven’t opened a mailer since 1975. Well, that might be your truth, that might be you, but about 3% of people do respond to mailers. Number two, we also have a turnkey Facebook advertisement system. Facebook? Someone might be saying, I never go on Facebook at all, that’s just for for other people. You know someone might be saying, I live on Facebook, oh my gosh I see your ads all the time. Somebody else might be saying, well kids today they use, you know, they’re out there using their Instagram and their Snapchat. Well, that’s cool, but we know our ideal and likely buyers and we are focused on reaching them. We’re not focused on reaching everybody. We are focused on reaching our ideal and likely buyers. And that’s just something you have to kind of work through is who are your ideal and likely buyers and who are not your ideal and likely buyers. So some action items here for you. Action item number one, you need to define who your ideal and likely buyers are. And I’ll help you with a little checklist here. So are they men or are they women? Are they wealthy or middle class or poor? Where do they live? Well, my customers live everywhere. Okay, well, if you have the marketing budget to drop the A-bomb of marketing on your town over and over and over again, then you do that. But if not, you’ve got to be specific. You don’t have enough ammo to run around just shooting your marketing everywhere. You’ve got to be more of a rifleman, more of a precision, like a laser-focused… You’ve got to get one of those laser scopes. They sell it at Woods, where it’s a completely unfair advantage between you and the animal. Where you have a laser… I mean, the animal doesn’t even know you’re hunting the animal. The animal doesn’t even know that you’re hunting it, but you now have a laser scope and you’re covered in deer pee. And that’s the sort of advantage you want to have. You want to determine your ideal and likely buyers. It’s very, very important that you do that. Don’t move past go if you haven’t done that. Then you got to figure out what is the three-legged marketing stool, the three legs of your marketing, what are you going to do to get your customers? So the third thing we do for Elephant in the Room is we get to the top of Google. And that’s something that anybody can do, but it requires a ton of work. And as a business coach, we’ll teach you how to do it. We’ll walk you through the process of how to optimize your website. We’ll even do it for you if you want, but the thing is you have to determine today what are the three ways that you’re going to get your customers. Now if you’ve been thinking to yourself, I want to start a business. I’ve always wanted to do that. Well, you’ve got a couple options here today. One is you could just listen to the show and say, well that was interesting and I wonder why the host of that show is so disturbing. I wonder if he ever goes outside. Does he do anything other than business? You could probably think that to yourself. Or you could go to thrive15.com. We have built what many are calling the world’s best business school. And it’s only $1. I mean, it’s a dollar for your first month, right? And then after that, it’s the outstanding $19 a month. However, if you can’t afford it, you can set your own price. And if you’re a member of the military, you serve this great country to make it free for us, then you actually get your subscription for free. For free? Are you saying that something is free? Yeah, I actually am. So it’s free. So those are some options. Also, you could go to ThriveTimeShow.com. That’s ThriveTimeShow.com. And you could book your ticket for the next in-person workshop. And we have so many people that come up to these workshops who can’t believe that there’s no upsell at it and that we teach you all of the proven moves. But the main concept I want to make sure we’re getting right now is you need to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten with your marketing. And how good is your marketing? I mean, if ten is just awesome, world-class, and one is terrible, you need to rate yourself on a scale of one to ten so that way you can be honest with yourself about where you’re at with your marketing today. And then if you’re a seven or a six, I mean, that’s definitely hurting you. You wanna make that turnkey business. You wanna find a way to generate new leads without you personally going out there and getting them. Now, Michael Gerber has another notable quotable from his book, E-Myth, that I’d like to read to you now. Somebody might wanna grab a sheet of paper or something. I know some of you are at Oklahoma Joe’s right now enjoying the fabulous barbecue, the baked beans, the brisket. I mean, some of you are just having an Oklahoma Joe’s buffet right now. You’ve heard rumors and allegations of how great the food is, and now you’ve headed on over there to one of the three locations, and it’s hard for you to write while you have barbecue sauce on your fingers from all the ribs. And I get that, and I encourage you to go to thrivetimeshow.com, listen to the podcast version of the show, and catch anything you missed. But this is what Michael Gerber says. He says, my experience has shown me that people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know, but because of their insatiable need to know more. I’m going to repeat that one more time. He says, my experience has shown me that people who are exceptionally good in business aren’t so because of what they know, but because of their insatiable need to know more. And that’s what this show is all about. This show is all about feeding your insatiable need to know more about how to grow your business successfully. Now, when we come back, we’re going to get into branding. Now branding is an area where a lot of people confuse branding and marketing together. Branding is like how good your logo looks, how good your website looks, how good your print pieces look. Basically, how good does every marketing material or how good does everything look that your customers see? How professional, how world class does everything look that your ideal and likely buyers are ever going to see that represents you? Stay tuned. We’ll be right back after the break. It’s the Thrive Time show on your radio. Up next we’re talking about branding. All right, welcome back to the Thrive Time show on your radio. It’s a show that’s all about you. For anybody tuning in for the first time, basically on this show we steer clear of politics. We don’t get into religion too much. We don’t talk about home and gardening. We don’t talk about… what we talk about are things that you can control. I remember I was reading Napoleon Hill’s book back in the day, Think and Grow Rich, per the recommendation of my boss, Jeremy Thorne. I was working at Faith Highway. It’s a business, it’s basically where we sold evangelism commercials to churches. The idea was you’d cold call a church and then you would try to convince the church to buy your commercials that they would run on the air on MTV, ESPN, that kind of thing. The idea was you’d run those commercials on the secular stations and then you’d be able to reach people that were maybe looking for a church or looking for a life change or something like that. And I was awful at that job for a long time. I wasn’t very good at it and my boss Jeremy Thorne sensed that I had some talent but that I just wasn’t you know harnessing that talent and he had me read Think and Grow Rich and it was one of those conversations where it’s like hey you should read Think and Grow Rich and I’m going okay cool I’ll probably I’ll try to do that and he goes no no no I mean you should read it or you’re fired. And I’m going, what? What? I thought, you’re going to read the book or you’re fired. And I thought, well, okay, since I don’t want to be fired, I’ll probably read the book. You know, I think a lot of us, you know, we need some sort of a break down before the breakthrough. We need some sort of a hit in the head sometimes before we’ll do what we need to do. And so I picked up the book and it starts off like the first chapter. It starts off high. You’re pumped up because he’s talking about, hey, I’m Napoleon Hill. I’m the personal apprentice of Andrew Carnegie, who was once the world’s wealthiest man. And I have an opportunity, I had an opportunity to interview this man and everyone he knows about how to become successful. And so you’re going, oh my gosh, this is awesome. Like this would be like having a book that features the wisdom of Bill Gates, of let’s go Michael Dell, of Steve Jobs, of Tesla, of, you know, I mean, of, you know, Elon Musk, I mean, of Oprah, of Sarah Blakely. I mean, this would be like having the secret code, you know. So you start reading the secret code thinking, man, I’m going to get, I do want to think and grow rich. And then about chapter two, you start going, ah, no, I just, when’s he going to get to the point? He won’t get to the, when’s he going to get to the meat? And he keeps telling you like, hey man, I’m going to give you the secret, but you got to stay tuned. You got to stay focused. I’m going to give you the secret. Well, then we move in. And then finally I get to this, this quote that blew my mind. He says, a man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. Well, no, no, no, no, that didn’t feel very good. He says, a man without a ship is like, or he says a man without a goal is like a ship without a rudder. Again, a man without a goal is like a ship with no rudder. Think about that for a second. I mean, is that you? I mean, is that you? Are you okay? Are you okay? Is that you? Because I think a lot of us, that’s what we’re doing, right? We’re out there going 90 miles an hour, going the wrong way, and we just need a little love focus. We need a rudder. You’re trying to climb up the mountain of success blindfolded because you just don’t know even what you don’t know at this point. But you look at a business like Dr. Zellner and Associates, you see his optometry booming, you go to z66aa.com, you see his auto auction just rocking and rolling, you’ve used epic photography for your daughter’s wedding or something or DJ Connection for a big corporate event. You’ve gone in the elephant in the room and have received a high quality haircut and you’re just not, you’re frustrated because you’re like, how is it possible that these guys who are probably not even that smart are building all these successful companies and I’m not. Maybe you are smarter than I am. And I would even say it’s almost a guaranteed stone cold lead pipe lock that you are in fact smarter than me. But the thing is it’s not about, oh here we go, it’s not about the hours you work. You know Jim Rohn, the best selling author says, you don’t get paid for the hours that you work, you get paid for the hours that you work You get paid for the value that you add to those hours And so what happens is then you have two options here. You need to get really curious about How we’ve been able to do it and say, you know what? I’m gonna learn what they do and I realize these guys have been successful and I think between Z and I it’s like 18 Industries, I think we said 18 different industries we’ve had success in. You know, options of photography, branding, commercial photography, radio advertisements, I mean wedding shows, I mean party rentals, medical equipment, basketball training, I mean it just goes on and on and on. The thing about it is every business is more the same than it is different. But if you can’t accept that truth and you just want to believe, well my industry is different and there’s no way possible that I can figure it out. I’m just going to listen to this show while I eat my Oklahoma Joe’s baked beans and just be irate. You can do that. In fact, there’s a lot of people that would validate that. You know, there’s statistics out there that show that 8 out of 10 businesses fail according to Forbes. You know, Inc. magazine shows 96% of businesses fail. You know, an article that came out that blew my mind in Forbes said that 65% of all of the jobs created in our country since 1995 were created by, who? Small business owners. And so, you could feel like, man, see, I’m just a small business owner trying to make it and I can’t do it. Or you could accept that more businesses are the same than they are different and you could seek that information. We’re going to teach you today how to do branding. So on a scale of 1 to 10, rate your branding. If 10 is awesome branding and 1 is terrible branding. You go, well, okay, buddy, aren’t you Mr. Judge, what is great branding? Show me an example, huh? Okay, well here’s an example. Go ahead and Google Tulsa dog training. Tulsa dog training. I’ll give you a moment. I’ll give you a moment. Here we go. What’s the boo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo Google Tulsa dog training. Bop bop bop bop bop. Don’t make me do it again. Boo doo doo doo. OK, so who comes up top? Who comes up top? What’s tip top canine who comes up top? That’s tip top Tulsa dog training. They come up top. And who comes up second? That’s a company we shouldn’t talk about. Who comes up second? I don’t know. Who comes up third? Oh, it’s Tip Top K9 again. And why are they coming up top? Because of a magical cosmic force? No. Because they paid more money to the Google? No. Because they know people who know people? No. They come up top in Google because they’re implementing the proven system. Now, once you get to their website, so go ahead and go to tiptopcanine.com. Go there real quick. Tiptopcanine.com. Once you go there, you’re going to discover they have a very, very sharp website. They have a great logo. They have a really clean looking website. They have a great video that shares their story. They have great online ads that are now going to follow you around the internet to whatever website you go to, but because you want to get your dog trained anyway. I mean, who doesn’t have a dog that won’t stop barking and peeing and jumping up on people so you’re going to visit them anyway. But they have a clear offer. They have a no-brainer. It says it’s $1 for the first time that you train your dog with satisfaction guaranteed. So they’ve got an offer, they’ve got the great branding. We come back, we’re going to dissect what makes the tip-top branding tip-top. Take a moment to rate your own branding on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the best, 1 being the worst. When we come back, we’re going to teach you how to take your branding to the next level. It’s going to be game changing. People might cry. I got three strikes, I’m going to go for it. This moment, we own it, eh? I’m not to be played with, because it could get bad, it could get bad. Welcome back to the Thrive Time Show on your radio. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year and the father of five human kids. Many people ask me all the time, five kids, wow, where do you find the time? What time do you wake up? When do you go to sleep? Do you even sleep? Do you sleep at all? I mean, you’re looking bad. What’s wrong? No. Here’s the thing is, I am very intentional about the way that I live. Very specific, I have a plan for my life and I live according to that plan. Some people might say that that’s pig-headed. Some people might say that’s not very nice, but I’m very happy all of the time because I’m living the life that I want. I’m living my life by design and to me that’s just fine. I don’t want to live my life by default. I do not want to live my life as a drifter. I do not want to end up like Time Magazine where it says the average person has $400 saved. Whoa! Google that real quick. Go ahead and Google the average American has $400 saved and type in the word the Atlantic and that should be the article that will come up the quickest for you. The article featured in the Atlantic which is a republication of the same statistics that were in Time Magazine. Or if you Google Gallup, you’re going to find that the majority of people hate their jobs. Type in that. Type in that. The majority of employees hate their jobs. Type in that real quick. See what happens. It’s amazing. So most people hate their jobs, right? Most people have no money saved as a result of working at their jobs. That means that people are exchanging five-sevenths. That means 5 out of 7 every working day. 5 out of 7 days to work at a job they don’t like to make enough money that doesn’t even get them where they want to go. Now I am a little different. I say time out. I want to live off the grid. I want to have a different lifestyle. So I have Camp Clark, I have the man cave, where I’m actually broadcasting from today, but the man cave is where we’re always learning, earning, and burning. And I’ve just decided, you know what? My wife and I, we want to have five kids. We want to have chickens. I want to have a lot of trees. Just this past weekend, I planted my 70th tree. I have high hopes to plant some more trees this week. I’ve got plans. When I say hopes, I’ve actually scheduled time to go get those trees. And so by the end of today, actually, I should be up to, I believe, 73 trees if everything works out and the trees are delivered. And I do that because it’s a plan, right? I mean, I take my wife out to dinner because it’s a plan. I have a date night planned with my wife because it’s a plan. My kids have not grown up to be idiots thus far because it’s a plan. We homeschool them because it’s a plan. So I’m asking you on a scale of 1 to 10 as it relates to your business, rate your branding on a scale of 1 to 10. A scale of 1 to 10. Now again, 10 being the best and 1 being the worst. And what I want to do is I want to give you an example of what I believe to be great marketing and great branding because I’ve seen the results work. So I want you to go up to TipTopK9.com. It’s TipTopK9.com. I’ve been working on a jingle for these guys that I haven’t really shared with them and they haven’t asked me for, and I don’t think it’s maybe gonna catch on the way that one would hope, but maybe, just maybe during the show today, I will sing the incredible Tip Top Canine jingle that I’ve been working on to you, and then maybe the ratings go dramatically down and maybe we never sing it again. But who knows, maybe it gets stuck in your head like, Robertson Tires. Hey, I get rolling with Robertson, Robertson Tires. Everybody now, get rolling with Robertson. Come on everybody, Robertson Tires. Sing it with me. Why am I singing that song? Because it’s branding. Branding is where you sear, you know, like back in the day with a cow, what you would do is you would sear the brand into the behind of the cow so as to never forget who owns the cow, right? Well, in marketing and branding, we can’t sear our brand into the arm of a customer. However, one of our business coaching clients this week, he did what I believe to be the unthinkable. And it’s unbelievable. He actually, as a way to celebrate his 38th birthday, and his rapid growth of his mortgage company, he’s been a business coaching client of ours for quite a while. He’s now top in Google, if you Google Tulsa Mortgages. Steve Currington actually bought himself a neon green Lamborghini. Well, then he decided to tattoo the Lamborghini logo onto his arm. Thus, he has branded the logo onto his body. And he has branded SteveCurrington.com on both of his arms. I’m not kidding. He literally has a tattoo that reads SteveCurrington.com on both arms. And I’m not endorsing that as a marketing strategy, but as we talk about branding, again, rate your branding on a scale of one to ten. Ten being the best, one being the worst. And this is Elon Musk talking to you, because I think if you can hear this message from a voice that’s more respected than my voice, then you’ll probably respect the message more. So this is what Elon Musk says about branding. And this is a guy who started Tesla, PayPal, SpaceX, you know, SolarCity, he’s doing some things. He says, brand is just a perception and perception will match reality over time. Sometimes it will be ahead. Others, it will be behind, but brand is simply a collective impression. Some have about a product. Well, my friends, branding, branding is so important. And so if you go to tip top canine.com and you look at their website, let’s deconstruct their website and why it’s good. They have a professional logo at the top left, looks very sharp. They have a clear call to action on their website. They basically want you to try them out for one dollar. I mean, if you have a dog that cannot be trained, it’s like a beast. I mean, have you ever had a beast? I remember as a kid, I did not properly train my dog. And so my dog, you’d walk into the house and it would immediately go, and it would like look at you and it was a boxer and the boxer would just jump on you and want to hug you and snuggle you. It liked new people, it liked guests, and it was just an uncomfortable thing. We almost had to become reclusive because if you ever invited the dog over or you ever invited someone over, the dog would just absolutely decimate the other person with slobber, destroying clothes, just not a good thing. So if you have a crazy dog, you owe it to yourself to go to tiptopcanine.com and try out their dog training. It’s a dollar for the first lesson. I mean, come on. But the thing is, they have a great brand, meaning they have a great logo. That’s one. You should write that down, logo. Two, their website. It’s a solid website, a great looking website. Three, their brand has a clear, a clear call to action. It’s a clear call to action. Four, their videos are awesome. They have a great video that shares their story. Five, their business cards are great. Six, any marketing materials they show people are great. And that’s about what you need to be successful in business today. Now, although it’s a little bit self-serving, the reason why they’re top in Google and the reason why their branding looks sharp is because they’ve put in the effort, but they are in fact, full disclosure, one of our business coaching clients. And so if you’re ever asking yourself, well, what does a business coach do? We help you whip your business into shape so you can make copious amounts of cash and maybe you could use that cash to burn wood, to use it as kindling, you could use that cash as decoration, allegedly you could exchange cash for goods and services at this point. I don’t believe we have to take the mark of the beast yet. We don’t have to take the brand yet from big government still to buy the things we want yet. Right. Yet the conspiracy theorists out there are saying yet. But the thing is, you you could exchange the cash that you make, the copious amounts of cash that you’re making for the goods and services that you want. And when we come back, we’re going to begin a deeper dive into this self-assessment. And I want everyone to get out a sheet of paper because I’m gonna ask you some questions that you probably haven’t asked yourself before. And if you’ll go ahead and take the survey with me, I promise you’ll be feeling good about your business success moving forward. Stay tuned, it’s the Thrived Time Show on your radio. ♪ Started from the bottom, now we here ♪ ♪ Started from the bottom, now we here ♪ Oh, do you know anybody who’s ever started from the bottom and is still at the bottom? Have you started from the top and now you’re at the bottom? Well if you don’t want to start at the top and go to the bottom or start at the bottom and go to the bottom, if you want to go from the bottom to the top, then this is the show you need to listen to nonstop. My name is Clay Clark. I’m the former USSBA Entrepreneur of the Year sent here on a magical mission to get you in a great financial position. On these magical microphones, we typically are broadcasting from the Thrive15.com world headquarters, which is on the left coast of the Arkansas River, which now consistently is having water, which just blows my mind. The Jinx Riverwalk is really starting to take off under new management, new leadership. Great things are happening. They now have the new golfing facility. You can go over there and whack a golf ball and have a brew. They’re now bringing in Andolini’s pizza. They’re bringing in Bernco over there. We’ve got the Los Cabos. I mean, just things are happening out there. It’s just… And then you got Thrive15.com, Tulsa’s best-kept secret. It is the number one epicenter for business school without the BS. If you’ve been going to the University of Tulsa to study business, I’m sorry. If you’ve been going to any other school to study business. I’m sorry if you’ve been spending a hundred thousand dollars On your business college. I am very sorry now if you’re going to OSU Oh you to you or you to learn an actual degree to get an actual discernible skill good job Go do that. I mean you need to be cut you’re gonna become a dentist You can’t just listen to the thrive time show enough to become a dentist if you want to become an architect you can’t just listen to the show enough to become an architect. But if you, once you have that skill and you want to actually turn it into a business, then that’s a different thing. And I would argue you cannot learn that very well within the confines of most colleges. There are some outliers out there, but this is the show where we teach you how to steer your entrepreneurship. You see what I did right there? We teach you how to steer your entrepreneurship through those tricky waters because it can be very dangerous out there. And so what we’re talking about today is from a business coaching perspective is we’re doing a self-evaluation with you. And as your business coach, I want you to take the evaluation with me. We first ask you to rate yourself on a scale of one to 10 on the area of marketing, 10 being the best, one being the worst. That’s how you get customers in a turnkey way. Two, we ask you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10 in the area of branding, 10 being the best and 1 being the worst. And now we move on. I want you to answer this question, okay? This is a question. I want you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being you have a clear vision that is written down and that has been definitely communicated to your entire team about where you’re going. Ten is you definitely have communicated your mission of where you’re going to your whole team. Everybody knows it. And a one is you have no clue about where you’re going. Maybe you do know where you’re going, but you haven’t told a single person. This is where you need to, on a scale of one to ten, you need to answer that question honestly. We’re talking about your vision and how well are you communicating that with your team. Somebody might be saying, well, I don’t care whether anybody on my team knows that vision at all because with or without them, I’m going to be having success. With or without you, buddy, I’m going to have success. Well, that may be true up to a certain point. I would argue when you’re starting your business, you’re first getting going and you’re pivoting a lot of times one of the challenges could be just dealing with the emotional Just jackassery of people who can’t handle Change, you know, I I started DJ connection. I remember at first I was started. I started out focused on clubs and school parties fraternities that kind of thing and when I switched to doing weddings because weddings were actually profitable and safe. That’s a crazy idea. Weddings were actually safe. I remember when my dad said to me, he goes, son, why don’t you start doing wedding DJing? You know, have you ever thought about doing weddings? And I’m going, no, I’m not a sellout. I’m not going to do weddings. I’m going to do clubs. I’m going to, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Yucatan Liquor Stand. It’s a thirsty Thursday. My name is DJ Clay. Let’s take a look at DJ Clay and I’m telling you what on display today we have got an unbelievable variety, a plethora of adult beverages and one dollar long necks. Sign up for the volleyball tournament. It’s going to be vivacious. Stay tuned. And then, you know, but after you’ve done that like a thousand times and you’ve realized that watching people in their late 40s look for, you know, designated drivers to get home on a Tuesday night or a Thursday night, you discover that’s really probably not the most, that’s not the highest and best use of my time. And so I eventually came back into the concept of doing weddings, but there’s a lot of people that on the team just didn’t want to do weddings. They were like, well, we do clubs. That’s what we do. We were hired to do clubs. We’re club DJs. Well I had to move on. You know, I had to say to them, hey, with or without you, I’m moving on. I mean, with or without you, I’m doing this. And so I didn’t need to communicate the vision really much to them, other than, hey, you guys don’t like the vision, you’re gone, boom. But then as the company began to gel, as it began to gain traction, as it began to grow as a result of a lot of business coaching and mentorship from some great Tulsa people, then I needed to communicate the vision more articulately to my team and to get them all rowing in the same direction. Because when you’re rowing fast, you’re rowing aggressively, right? But one member of your team is just not rowing at all, you’ll actually spin in a circle. You’ll be rowing super fast and you’re like, everybody faster, let’s go. And faster, let’s row, let’s row, let’s go. And faster, here we go. Everybody, let’s row, let’s row. Let’s row man. One guy’s not rowing at all You’re gonna start spinning in a circle and you’re gonna go why why are we spin spinning in a circle? Why are what oh, it seems like we’ve been here before. That’s because one person’s not rowing at all, right? So what you have to do is you have to communicate this vision to Your your team and it’s a challenge, but I know that you can do it. Now, the second area, this next area I want you to rate yourself on, on a scale of one to 10. And go ahead and get out a sheet of paper and write these down. These are great questions, okay? Okay, so here’s the next one. On a scale of one to 10, rate the quality of the systems and processes that your company uses to achieve the success you want. So on a scale of one to 10, if 10 is every time the phone rings, we have a script for that, right? But a one is we don’t have one at all. I want you to rate yourself on a scale of one to 10. If 10 is the best and one is the worst, I want you to rate yourself on a scale of one to 10 with how you would rate, again, how you would rate your systems and processes. And not to overwhelm you, but it definitely will be overwhelming. I’m going to throw a bunch of systems and processes at you that you need to have. One is an inbound call script. Two is an outbound call script. Three is an inbound email response. Four is an outbound email response. Five is an inbound text message. Seven is an outbound text message. Are you getting the point here? Inbound and outbound. Inbound and outbound calls. You need a pre-written text, email, and phone script. And then we move on. Then once you’re actually on the phone with somebody and you set an appointment or you close the deal, whatever, you need to have a sales presentation that is scripted. Right? Then you need to have scripted pricing. How you quote. You need to have an agreed upon system and process for pricing, for quoting the prices of your products or services, you got to nail that down, right? Then you got to have a process for how you fulfill, you know, how you deliver. I went to a restaurant the other day and I’m not kidding. I went in, I ordered a soup and then the waitress did not come back for almost 30 minutes. And it’s okay. I mean, it’s, it’s, I’m sure that she’s figuring out life, but I had to go up to the owner and say to the owner, Hey, or the manager, whoever, someone who appeared to be in charge. And I just said, Hey, I’ve ordered something and no one’s visited me for 30 minutes. Kind of a lonely guy. Could you come back and help me? And luckily the guy was a radio show listener and he kind of laughed it off. And I didn’t, I wasn’t aggressive. I just said, I’m kind of a lonely guy, you know, could you help me? And but to deal with, you know, there probably wasn’t either a process written down for how they were going to handle these situations when maybe the food takes longer to get out or B, the person was choosing not to do the processes. But if you don’t have the processes to begin with, it’s really hard to hold people accountable to executing them. And we’ve had a lot of people that have emailed over the years and have said, I don’t know if you guys know this, but before we did the radio show, we had the online school, which we still have, thrive15.com. And people will email us all the time to info at thrive15.com. Again, info at thrive15.com and we’ll respond to your questions. And one of the questions we’ve had over the years quite a bit is, Clay, who are your mentors? You’ve mentioned you’ve had business coaches. You’ve had people that have coached you to business success, people that have really shown you the way. And I want to brag on one of them today that has made a huge impact in my life, and that is Terry Fisher. So if you’re listening right now and you know Terry Fisher of the Victory Christian Center fame, of the Guts Church fame, he has a daughter named Lindsay, right? Terry Fisher lives right across from Holland Hall, the guy who owns Trinity Chemical. If you know that Terry Fisher, send him a text message and say that Clay Clark is very thankful for him. He took time out of his schedule. He had had a ton of success in the world of business, and he invested time in teaching me the right way. When we come back, we’re going to teach you how to build a scalable business that has the capacity to work without you. Your ultimate business coaching experience begins when we come back. I want to be on the cover of Forbes magazine, smiling next to Oprah and the Queen. Oh wow, oh wow, oh wow. You know, I’ve never been on the cover of Forbes magazine. However, if you do Google Thrive 15 and then Forbes, you will actually see an article that comes up that says, How to Prepare for the Entrepreneur Life You Want. And that’s an article that they wrote about basically the best training tools that are available to become an entrepreneur, a successful entrepreneur. And we were thankfully named as one of those solutions, we being our online school, thrive15.com, which is the most affordable business school you’re ever going to find. And it is an online and offline school, so I want to make sure we’re getting this. You know, a lot of people learn really well through interactive actual training where they can ask the professor questions. You know, they learn well where they can talk to a professor and say to the professor, hey professor, I have a question. And that’s a question that a lot of people learn that way. They, you know, you need to have a, it’s hard for you to learn when you just watch a video. I get it. You know, some people, it’s hard for you to learn by reading a book. Some of you, the best way for you to learn is through that one-on-one interaction or that kind of a workshop where you can get up, ask questions, you can write things down, you can see things on the whiteboard. I would argue that’s the most effective way to learn business. I’ve seen it taught tons of different ways. I’ve seen the variety. Tons? Are you talking about you’ve actually measured the weight of how? No. I’ve seen it done many different ways and it is the best way to learn how to start or grow a successful company. And so I would challenge you to go to thrivetimeshow.com and book your tickets for our next in-person workshop. We’re located here at the beautiful Jinx Riverwalk. So we’re right there within walking distance of the unbelievable golfing facility there where you can golf. It’s a big driving range and you can grab beers while smashing golf balls. We got Andolini’s over there, the new pizza place just going in. You got Los Cabos. You’ve got Bernco coming in. It’s awesome, man. Outdoor concerts. I don’t know why you wouldn’t come out to one of our two-day in-person workshops. And maybe you’re somebody who says, I don’t have the money. Well, if you don’t have the money, because of how we’ve set it up with some of our partners, we now have a scholarship available so everybody can now afford to have access to the world’s best business school. I mean we have a scholarship available so nobody will be turned away because of the price. That’s no longer a thing. So if you can’t afford it, now you can. And I want to encourage you that you’ve got to get out there to thrive15.com. And your first month at thrive15.com, the world’s best business school, is only a dollar. And that includes access to the in-person workshops. So really, you’re getting the two-for-one special. There’s really no reason for you not to do it. I encourage you to do it. I wish I could make you do it because I know it’ll change your life. And the thing about finances is that kind of in Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there’s a pyramid, right, for Maslow. Those of you who don’t know who Maslow was and the hierarchy of needs, you can Google it real quick. But the point is, the very bottom, the very basic need we all have is obviously for food and shelter. And then after that, it’s belonging and having a sense of a purpose or a community. And then you worry about safety. And you just kind of move on up there. But what we want to do is we want to knock out the money part, right? Right away. Let’s figure out a way in the next nine months for you to become financially free. I mean, if you had the time, freedom, and financial freedom to do whatever you want to do, what would you be doing right now? How would you spend your day if you had all of the time freedom and financial freedom you could possibly have? Well, I’ll tell you how I would do it. I would do exactly what I do. I am doing what I love to do. See that? I am actually doing exactly what I would be doing. Some people say to me all the time, Clay, what do you want to do? I am doing what I want to do. This is it. I am in broadcasting today from the man cave, which was the place where my wife and I basically done massive renovations to Camp Clark and Chicken Palace and it’s a place where I’m always learning earning and burning and in my opinion there should always be the smell of pinion and because there is actually the smell of pinion right now I love it it is great I can hear a little bird chirping I’ve got the pinion smell coming in here the only problem I have is that sometimes I don’t want to leave. I just want to stay in the man cave all day. I just love it. I love, I don’t want to go on vacation. We’ve built this vacation place. It’s just, it’s the spot. It’s the jam. It’s the deal. And I know that you can build the spot, the place, the jam, and the deal. You can do what you need to do financially quickly if you’ll just participate with me emotionally and mentally as we go through these self-assessments today. So the next question I have for you is on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being awesome, 1 being terrible, how would you rate your company’s knowledge of everyone’s KPIs? How would you rate your knowledge of everyone’s key performance indicators? On a scale of 1 to 10, if a 10 is everybody knows specifically the numbers they’re held accountable for, then you earn a 10. You’re a genius. I owe you a high five. If you are one where no one has any idea what they’re supposed to do, no one’s held held accountable to anything, then you need to get out to an in-person workshop for sure right away because nobody can be, no one will get anything done if they’re not held accountable to some certain standard. You’ve got to hold your team accountable to some type of standards. I encourage you to go ahead and rank yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. 10 being the best, 1 being the worst as it relates to everyone knowing their numbers. If people don’t know their numbers, they drift. And here’s an example. Here’s a very real example for you. Back in the day, one of my companies I had was called Epic Photography. Epic Photography, many of you maybe have used us for your weddings. We won the award from the Knot.com as being the best photographers in 2013, 2014, I think it was 15, I think we skipped 16, but then 17, something like that. We’ve won the award now five times. The company is a member of the Wedding Hall of Fame with the Knot.com, which is kind of a big deal. That’s like the Wedding Better Business Bureau or the Wedding Rating Police. So if you have a very, very high rating with them, that’s a tough thing to do in that industry. Anyway, that company, for our salespeople, I required that every salesperson made a minimum of 100 outbound calls per day. 100 outbound calls per day. And I will tell you, so many people who have worked there over the years thought that was just terrible. You know, people, oh, it’s terrible. You make me make a hundred calls a day? That’s awful. I remember people used to come up to me and go, excuse me, I just want to know, I mean, so I made like 70 calls and I’d like to get to a hundred, but I want to know what tips you have for staying motivated.” And so I would say, well, here’s the deal. If you don’t make 100 calls, then you just make minimum wage. But if you do make 100 calls, then you make 10 an hour plus commissions. Okay, so I’m very motivated now. And so I had to determine the key performance indicators. Let me explain this to you. If you do not hold your team accountable to a certain standard, people will always fall to the level of expectation. People always fall to the level of expectation that you have. And nobody is better at talking about expectations than Steve Jobs. You know, Steve Jobs is the guy who’s the co-founder of Apple. He is the guy who was the CEO of Pixar. He took over Pixar there from George Lucas as he was going through a divorce. You know, Mr. Star Wars, he’s going through a divorce and he came in and took over his business and took it to the next level. And I’m going to read to you a notable quotable from from Steve. And I think that the quote is powerful. But only if you you know, if you’re if you’re if you’re kind of in that line of thinking right now where you’re saying I’m coachable, because you’re saying, you know what, I’m not I’m not coachable. I’m just going to you don’t understand my my industry is different. Then I would recommend that you, you know, would probably devote the majority of your day going to Oklahoma Joe’s and seeing how many, you know, see how much food you could eat and while listening to this show passively, but actively focus on eating as much food as possible and passively listen to the show. Now if you love the show, I encourage you to actively listen to the show, engage with the show, but then I encourage you to passively get over to Oklahoma Joe’s, have the food, but still be listening to the show. Focus on the show. Implement what we’re learning. Um, Thomas Edison said, said that vision without execution is hallucination. Thomas Edison’s Thomas Edison, the guy who invented the light bulb, you know, recorded audio video. He said that the, he said he’s a, he’s a founder of GE. He says that vision without execution is hallucination. And so you don’t want to hallucinate. You want to get things done. And here is the notable quotable. He says, be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. You’ve got to hold your team accountable to a high standard or by default, they are definitely going to drift. And I see it time and time again. I’ll go into a business, another example, I used to work with Oral Roberts University and their call center. I was brought in to help fix the call center, which is funny because I actually got asked to leave Oral Roberts University as a result of a parody that I wrote about the school’s president. But it was kind of fun getting asked to come back and help fix the call center. And the move number one that we did is we began to hold everyone accountable to a set number of outbound calls. And I’m gonna give you the real number, 200. 200? Yeah, we required everyone to make 200 outbound calls per day. And you might be thinking to yourself, how is that even possible? Well, it’s possible because we had a clear target. We knew the key performance indicators. We knew what we were doing. We knew what we were going for. And because we knew that, it was very easy to hold the team accountable to those hard numbers. So your action item right now, if you don’t have key performance indicators, you must get them. And so now we move on to our next notable quotable. Our next notable quotable. Now this notable quotable it might come come across as a little bit rough, a little bit, I don’t know, tough here for you. But Gino Wickman is the best-selling author of a book called Traction, and he talks about diamond mines. Is this a book about diamond mining? I don’t want to learn about diamond mining. I want to learn about how to grow a business. Well, okay, work with me. Hang tight. He wrote this book called Traction, and what he talks about is that most entrepreneurs will do this. Not you, I mean other people. The people that you know are doing this, not you. This just in. You have never done this, but the people you know have done this. And here it is. He says, most people are sitting on their own diamond minds. The surest way to lose your diamond mind is to get bored, become overambitious, or start thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Find your core focus, stick to it, devote your time and resources to excelling at it. Whoa! That deserves a second read, Gino Wickman. Okay, I’ll read it one more time. Most people are sitting on your own diamond mines. The surest way to lose your diamond mine is to get bored, to become overambitious, or to start thinking that the grass is greener on the other side. Find your core focus, stick to it, and devote your time and resources to it. That is powerful. That is powerful when you think about the fact that if your team doesn’t, if their team’s not held accountable to a set number, a quota, you’re never gonna find those diamonds in those mines. You’re gonna move on to another hill. You keep moving on to another hill, you’re never gonna get that traction. Now, the next question I want you to ask yourself here, on a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, one being the worst, how confident are you that your company has a core differentiator? On a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, one being the worst, how confident are you that your company has a clear differentiator, a clear, we’ll call it a purple cow something that makes you unique because if you’re doing the exact same thing as your Competition it becomes very hard for people to remember you and to choose you over the competition we come back We’re going to talk about how to make how to define your core Differentiator stay tuned thrive timeshow.com All right, Thrive Nation, welcome back into the conversation. It is the Thrive Time Show on your radio. If you’ve just now tuned into this show, let me tell you what this show is all about. It is business school without the B.S. It’s all about helping you achieve time freedom and financial freedom because I believe that you are put on the earth for a special purpose that God has for you. And I don’t know what that purpose is. I don’t know what your vision for your life is, but I can tell you that you deserve to have an F6 life. An F6 life. What does that mean? I mean, you’re achieving your goals in the areas of faith, finances, friendship, fun, right? All those areas. You don’t need to have a compartmentalized life where you’re only achieving success financially. We believe you need to have an F6 abundant life. You can do it if you want to. And I know you can do it because there’s people out there, business coaching clients out there just like you. There’s people we’ve worked with as a business coach to help them dramatically improve their business during a small window of time. I say small, about a nine-month window of time, a one-year window of time. I’ve seen complete transformations. And that’s why I do what I do. I mean, I’ve been able to build a DJ connection. I was able to build Elephant in the Room with my brother-in-law. I’ve been able to build Epic Photography. If I didn’t want to, I don’t need to work. I can sit around and pontificate about the the pinion wood as I often do. You know whether it’s a good batch of pinion wood or a bad bad batch of pinion wood or what kind of pinion wood I should be burning or I could be talking about that I can be obsessing about that but instead I’ve had a lot of people over the years who’ve said hey Dr. Zellner, Clay could I pick your guys brains? Could I pick your brain because I want to know how to start a successful company and we’ve decided to say you know what yes we will we will show you the way. And one of the companies we’ve had the pleasure of working with this year is called Tip Top K9, and their sales are incredible. They are absolutely growing by leaps and bounds because they had a great product, but people just didn’t know about the product. They just didn’t know about it. People did not have any knowledge of what they did. And so what we have done is we’ve helped them clarify their vision. Where are they going? We’ve helped them to improve their branding, their print pieces, their website, their marketing materials. We’ve helped them create a turnkey marketing system where it’s generating inbound leads, people calling them every day to get their dogs trained so they can focus on what they want to do, which is achieving their F6 goals. If you have a dog that needs to be trained, if you have a dog that hasn’t been trained, you know what I mean. It’s crazy. You have a dog that’s jumping up on everybody and slobbering on everything, and you’ve decided to actually alter your normal work week, your normal life balance. You’ve said, you know what, let’s not have people come over anymore because the dog is jumping up on people. If you’ve started to change the way that you’re living, if you’re no longer having Thanksgiving at your house because you have a wild wildebeest of a dog that’s just destroying everything, you can see the value that having a dog trainer where they guarantee the results could make a big difference. In fact, their dog school, it’s only a dollar for the first session. And then if you like it, they have a program to meet any budget. I’m bragging on those guys because they are diligent doers. Diligence means the steady application of effort. They are people that steadily apply effort and they do what they’re supposed to do. That’s why the business coaching program has worked so well for them. During one of the segments, I had said that I have a theme song I’ve been working on for them, a jingle. And for those of you who say this jingle sounds a little familiar, when you hear it, if you say that jingle sounds a little familiar, almost like I’ve heard it somewhere else before, that’s because it’s a good jingle. I mean, it’s so good it feels like you know it, right? It’s going to get stuck in your head like the Robertson Tire. Remember Robertson Tires? They’re Robertson Tires. I get rolling with Robertson, Robertson Tires. Hey, that’s how we want this song. We want this tip-top jingle to get stuck into your cranium where you can’t get it out. Then we’re going to get back into discussing what is your core differentiator, what makes you different in the marketplace. So here is, without any further ado, the tip-top canine jingle I’ve been working on for several months. Now the world don’t move to the bark of just one breed. What might be right for you, might not be right for some. A dog is born, he’s a different breed. Then along comes you, and you got nothing but your green. But they got the different strokes it takes, the different strokes it takes, different strokes to train a dog. He’s got a special kind of dog. Everybody finds a dog they like. Don’t matter what you got, not a lot. So what? You’ll have yours, you’ll have yours, and I’ll have mine. And you get a boot by a canine. Says it takes a tip-top canine to train your dog. Yes, it does. It takes a tip-top canine to train your dog. Yes. That was one take, Thrivers. One take. I’m talking about that right there deserves an immediate complaint or an immediate thank you. And I’m willing to take whatever you’ll give me at this point. But Thrive Nation, I’m telling you, I love the guys at Tip Top K9. I know they now think less of me as a result of that insanely, just brutal butchering of the Different Strokes soundtrack. Remember the show Different Strokes? I mean, I feel like I haven’t seen that show for a long time and I had to find a way to bring life back to it while celebrating the success of Tip Top K9 here in Tulsa. That was the best that I could come up with. Please definitely email your complaints to info at thrive15.com and I’ll keep them coming in hot. If you want a jingle for your business, let me know and it will probably decrease the amount of business that you get. But as it relates to growing your business, everything else you need, we can do that for you. So Thrive Nation, we’re now talking about your differentiator, your core differentiator. What makes your business different? And on a scale of one to 10, we asked you to rate yourself. If 10 is, wow, we’re so different and everybody knows we’re different we’re totally unlike anybody else and a one is your business is like the vanilla you know you’re the same you’re trying not to offend anybody you’re trying to appeal to everybody and so you’ve named your company something like a one home remodeling you know a best roofing something I don’t know something like that where it’s a name that you know is safe it’s fine and but then when you look at your website, your products are professional. You know, you’re saying, oh, well, if you’re, here’s a little game for you. If you had to explain to somebody three ways that your business is different from your competition, and you can’t say professional, and you can’t say great customer service, and you can’t say high quality, what would you say? And that is what I am getting at. You need to know how your business is different. Seth Godin wrote a book called Purple Cow where he says that in a world where there’s so much going on, so much advertisement, so much marketing, we’re being inundated with marketing through text messages, through Facebook, through email, through billboards. We’re just being bombarded with messages. Not being remarkable is the same as being invisible. You don’t want to be invisible. People need to remember your business. As an example of how to do it, we named the elephant in the room because it begs the question, what is the elephant in the room? When you come in, you’re going to be greeted with an adult beverage. You have a paraffin hand dip. You have a hot towel treatment. It has that man decor. It is an incredible game-changing experience. When people come in, they go, oh my gosh, this is so different from anything else I’ve ever been to. And I challenge you, go to EITRLounge.com and book your first haircut. It’s only a dollar. Check out the differentiator. Stay tuned. Thrivetimeshow.com. All right, welcome back to the Thrivetimeshow on your radio. Today we’re talking all about self-assessments that your business coach can do with you, or that through the magic of radio, through the magic of Thomas Edison’s, many of his inventions here. You know, Thomas Edison is one of the top, most successful entrepreneurs of all time, and a very, very ridiculously successful inventor. And he had this notable quotable where he said that knowledge without application is meaningless. He said that vision without execution is hallucination. And so this entire show, the Thrive Time show on your radio, is entirely devoted to helping you learn what you need to know, those practical action steps that you need to take to turn your vision into reality. You know, we’ve all had that dream to achieve time, freedom, and financial freedom. But many of us, for whatever reason, we start a business and we have a degree, we have a knowledge of, let’s say, welding, we have a knowledge of dentistry, of photography, of whatever your core skill is, and as a result of the education system or the way you were raised or what you were taught or weren’t taught, whatever, you don’t know how to run a successful company. And that’s okay. But we now are providing you business school without the BS so that you can learn the next steps that you need to take to achieve that time freedom and financial freedom. And if you love this show, I highly recommend you go up to thrive15.com, the world’s most affordable business school. It’s a dollar for the first month, and that membership includes access to the in-person workshops because we’re finding that thousands and thousands of people are telling us they love the videos and it helps them a lot, all the downloadables and all the templates, all the tools. And they also love that one-on-one engaging workshop experience that cannot be replicated over the internet or over a computer screen. They like that. And many of you right here in Tulsa, I mean, this for you is like you’ve won life’s lottery. You’re right here, located right here by the Jinx World Headquarters, the Thrive15.com World Headquarters in Jinx, America. You’re within driving distance. So just go up to ThriveTimeShow.com, just go up to ThriveTimeShow.com and get your tickets for the next in-person workshop. And I can tell you that from my personal experience, I know you’ll have a great time. I can also tell you from the reviews that you’ll find up there from real thrivers from all over the country who’ve attended our workshops They leave saying this is exactly what I was looking for We joke around and we say from clay to Z It’s everything you need to know to start a grow a business obviously referencing my name Clay Clark The former SBA entrepreneur of the year and dr. Zellner But really and sincerely it has built We’ve built Thrive15.com, The Thrive Time Show, our in-person workshops, and our business coaching have been all designed with you in mind with the goal of helping you to achieve financial freedom and time freedom. And so right now we’re thinking about your differentiator. We’re asking you to rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10. What makes you different from your competition? And for most business owners, unfortunately, they don’t know. They never think about it. They just feel like if they have great services or great products that they will by default then take over the marketplace. And it almost never works that way. And so I’m going to give you some examples. Some of the examples ring more true in the past than in the current present because I’ve actually sold businesses along the way, but one company I could think of is called epic photography that was our photography business that I started years ago in epic photography That was we won the award for The not.com the wedding Hall of Fame, you know, we’ve been invited there does the wedding Hall of Fame members We’ve won the award for the best photography in the wedding industry We’ve made millions of dollars and it was a very successful company but there was there’s really four things that we did that made the company different from the competition when I owned it now that I’ve sold it I have no clue of what they’re doing but and I frankly don’t care because I’ve moved on but there are four things that we did back in the day and one was that we offered unlimited time with every photography package so every photography package we did had unlimited time. No other photographer did that. You know, photographers are used to charging four hours, they’re charging based off of four hours of time. You’re trying to book the photographer for the biggest day of your life, you know, to capture the images of one of the big moments in your life and the photographer’s trying to come up to you at 8.30 saying, hey, you know, I’ve hit my four hours, you know, now if you want me to, you know, go ahead and keep taking the photos I can but it’ll be have to be over time what do you want to do do you want to get those memories that are priceless or do you want to cough up the big bucks and have me stick around for a while I thought it was a stupid discussion that I saw over and over happening because I had built the world’s largest wedding entertainment company and I saw this happening over and over so I thought this is stupid so we started offering unlimited time with our wedding photography and it did very, very well. The second thing we did, and again I’m encouraging you to think of what’s going to make you different from the competition. The second thing we did is we’ll beat any competitor’s price by 15%. Anybody’s price by 15%. On average we beat people’s prices by 30%, but we beat anybody’s price by 15%. Why? Because I had the system so refined and so detailed I didn’t need to rely upon certain photographers. It was a system. It was systemized. When you go into Subway to buy a sandwich, very few of us go in and go, hey, is Carl here? Is Carl here? I was looking for him at Carl’s Jr., but I no longer go there because apparently he doesn’t work there anymore. He doesn’t flip the burgers. And I was hoping he got a new job over here at Subway because I want him to be my personal sandwich artist. No, what you do is you’re loyal to the brand because of the consistency of the product. The consistency of the product is not based on the people that work there. It’s built on systems. You want to build your business based on systems, not based on people. So one was unlimited time. Two, we’ll beat anybody’s price. Three, we had a style chooser. So you as the bride got to sit down with our event planners, our coordinators, and you got to sit down and tell them what kind of photos you liked, what kind of photos you didn’t like. You were able to choose the style that was right for you. And that way, when you chose the photographer and you knew that that photographer wasn’t going to bring their particular bias or style to the wedding, but they’re going to do what you wanted them to do. And that’s a novel idea. I mean, do what the customers want you to do. What? Yeah. And that, so that was, that was move number three. So again, one, okay, is we had what? Unlimited time. Two, we beat any competitor’s price by 15%. Three, three, right, we let you choose your style. And four, we did a two-week turnaround time. Now, why did we do a two-week turnaround time? Well, we did that because every other photographer was taking a nuclear half-life to get your wedding photos back to you. Have you ever met somebody who’s had a wedding, or have you ever had a wedding where you have been waiting for like six months or eight months for your wedding photos and in videos what are they doing with them it doesn’t take that long to edit them you know why these artists always take so long this just in this just in this little business coaching tip for all the photographers out there do you know why most photographers take six months to get your wedding photos back to you uh… you could call it disorganization you could call it jackassery. I would call it jackassery. Half of these people are the most disorganized artsy-fartsy people on the planet. They could not manage a, I don’t know if they could manage like a game of like, you know, King of the Hill, you know, where the kids are trying to push each other off the hill and see who gets to be to the top. I don’t know if they could manage a group of three kids playing that game. A lot of these photographers are ridiculous. They have no concept of efficiency. There’s no checklists. There’s no best practices. There’s no scripting. So everything takes forever. And I have been on the I’ve actually had a guy in my office back in the day who it’s hilarious, but he didn’t want to use our photographers for his wedding because he didn’t want he wanted them to be able to attend the wedding. You know, he didn’t want him to have to work at his wedding. So he hired somebody else. And I said, Hey, hey, hey, do not. Hey, hey, do not do that. He did it, and I’m telling you, he waited forever, forever for his wedding photos, and he didn’t even like them when he received them. So when we come back, we’re going to teach you how to build a proven process to make your business repeatable so that you don’t take a nuclear half-life to return your wedding photos to brides and grooms. Stay tuned, Thrivetimeshow.com. Welcome back to the Thrivetimeshow on your radio. My name is DJ Clay. I’m the former SBA Entrepreneur of the Year and a former disc jockey who has been sent here on a diplomatic mission to help you dramatically change your financial position. And today specifically what we’re doing is it’s all about self-analysis. It’s all about self-evaluation. It’s so hard to improve in the world of business if you don’t know what you don’t know. And as a business coach, as somebody who’s been business coaching for over a decade, working with clients all over the planet, coaching them to success, I have discovered that many, many people don’t even know what they don’t know. And that’s why we encourage you to go to Thrivetimeshow.com and to book your self-assessment. Because when you book an assessment, we will guide you through this process and you’re going to discover major areas that you can improve upon right now. I mean, you’re going to find areas, weaknesses in your business. We call them biggest limiting factors. You’re going to find the blips, the biggest limiting factors that are keeping you enslaved in the wage cage. I mean, you shouldn’t have to exchange all of your time for money if you’re an entrepreneur. You should be able to build a repeatable business system that’s going to allow you to purchase your time back. If you don’t want to mow the lawn, you should be able to pay someone to do that. If you don’t want to do your sales, you should be able to pay someone to do that. If you don’t want to do your accounting, you should be able to pay somebody to do that. The whole idea is that you should be able to make a list of your F6 goals, your goals for your faith, your family, your finances, your fitness, your fun, and your friendships, and you should be able to go do them, go achieve them, because you built a business that allows you to have all the time and the financial freedom that you need to do what you want to do. And so this next question I would ask you is on a scale of 1 to 10, on a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate your process for doing business with your actual business customers? How would you rate your process for actually conducting business with your customers on a scale of one to ten of ten is the best and One is the worst because you have to you have to not only name the system Identify the system write down the system, but you then must visually illustrate the process? Because people are visual, right? People need to see the process. The Canadians need to see the process. If you don’t see the process, and the process is not written down, if people cannot see it visually, what happens is, is it prevents understanding from occurring. It prevents communication from occurring. A lot of people think that communication is stating things at people, but communication has not really occurred until both parties understand. And so you’ve got to have this mindset that you’re absolutely going to have the best presentation layer of your proven process, your best visual diagrams. And so, you know, Steve Jobs, the guy who co-founded Apple and went on to be the CEO of Pixar. He took over that company for George Lucas when George Lucas was going through his divorce. He says, be a yardstick of quality because some people aren’t used to an environment where excellence is expected. And you have to be that sort of yardstick of quality if you’re going to be successful as an entrepreneur. You can’t just say, I have it written down, now we’re good. No, no, you need to make a visual presentation layer. If you don’t know how to do that, well, one, you’re going to need a whiteboard, right? Two, you’re going to need probably an illustrator or a graphic designer to help you with that, and we can do that. But when you start to execute and do all these systems and make everything and it begins to gel and become a turnkey system, you are going to begin to experience financial success. And I want to brag on one thriver we have out there who’s just been getting it done. It’s so exciting to watch these people turn their dreams into reality. And these people I’m talking about is it’s tip top canine. They are these dog trainers in Tulsa who if you Google Tulsa dog training, they come up right up top in Google and their business is just booming. They’re hiring people that I know, their sales are through the roof. It’s awesome the rate of growth they’re having, but it’s because they’ve done the action items we’ve been talking about during today’s show. They’ve been nailing down their branding, nailing down their marketing. I mean, as their business coach, I’m so proud and excited for them to see them be able to move into a place of financial abundance. It’s just exciting to watch it happen. And so, as a tribute to them, during today’s show I’ve been writing jingles for them. It’s my way of saying thank you. However, I don’t know that after they hear this next jingle, whether they’re going to want this jingle to be their official jingle or not, but on faith I’m going to give them, and you, the listener, the jingle. They’ve never heard it before, it’s never been played anywhere, and I put down the track I put down the background vocals But I’m going to attempt to do it for you live on the air because that’s what I’m all about is just doing it live One take can we do it can we pull it off and here’s the story? Here’s the who’s kind of the premise of the song this song is about a man who is obsessed With his dog so he goes out there. He buys a dog He gets a great breed and he wants his dog to become a championship dog that will compete and win those dog tournaments, those dog breeding championships where the dog prants around on ESPN. He believes he can win, and his obsession for his dog leads to him losing his job, and he ends up moving in with his mother, and basically it just gets bad. But thanks to Tip Top Canine, he’s able to train this championship dog and he starts winning awards earning copious amounts of cash and he’s letting us know about it it’s it’s it’s fabulous it’s gonna change your life here it is yep this album is dedicated to all the dog trainers that told me my dog would never amount to nothing to all the people that live near me when I got my first dog and try to call the police on me but I was just trying to get my dog to be quiet not inside a riot and all the dog owners in the struggle, you know what I’m saying? It’s all good baby, it was all a dream, I used to read K-9 magazine, Pyrenees and Bulldogs up in the limousine, hanging pictures on my wall, every Saturday dog parks and puppies at the mall, I let my dreams rot till I lost my job, jobless and dog crazy I moved in with my mom, way back when I got my red and black leggy back, with the onesie to match Remember Peanuts and Snoop? Wa-wa-wa-wa! You never thought that dog love would take it this far Well now I’m in the limelight, cause my dogs don’t bite Time to get paid, blow up like the world trade Bruce Jenner, the Olympian winner Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner Piece of therapy, Aunt Nancy People who doubted my dog and questioned my sanity I’m blowing up like you thought I would call the crib same number same dog it’s all good oh and if you don’t know now you know thanks to tip top canine yeah call tip top canine dot com tip top check them out yes yes oh ryan rachel hopefully you enjoy that song right there that’s the best i’ve got i don’t i don’t really have a lot of discernible talent in fact i don’t have any discernible talents, but one thing that I have an appreciation for is it’s old school hip hop. And I feel like that if I can ever have an excuse to bring old school hip hop into the Thrive Time Show, I’m going to do it. Something else I have a passion for is you, the Thriver. I have a passion for you to become a master of online marketing. I have a passion for you to become a king of lead generation. I have a growing need for you to become a social media superstar. I have a white hot ardor, that’s a burning passion, for you to become a time management master. I obsess about you learning how to hire and fire as required. I want you, I’m a lunatic for linear workflow enhancement. I am boisterous about you becoming an effective executive. I cry when I think about your ability to, what will happen when you can multiply your income. And the only way that I can help you, help me help you, help, you need to help me help you, help me help you. I can’t help you unless you take action. You know, I can tell you that Thomas Edison said he said he said he said vision without execution is hallucination. I could tell you Proverbs 10 for so that God blesses the hand of the diligent and he punishes the slackered. I could tell you that if you don’t sow the seeds, they won’t grow. I could I could I could do whatever I could try all these different moves, but I’m not trying to manipulate you, I’m trying to persuade you to take action. Go to thrivetimeshow.com and book your tickets for the next in-person workshop. We have an unbelievable opportunity for you. One is it’s two days long, it’s 15 hours, where we cover everything you need to know to start or grow a successful business. We have a money back guarantee, so if you’re not happy you get your money back. We have a scholarship program so you can afford it. And if you just go to thrive15.com and you sign up for your first month of the world’s best business school, it actually includes your access to the in-person Thrive Time workshops. So really there’s no reason, there is not a single reason that you should not take advantage of this offer, unless you’re just, you know it all, and you just listen to this show for entertainment, or you already have copious amounts of cash and this is just an entertainment show. Then if that’s you, don’t stress out about it. But I want to see you at our next workshop go to thrive timeshow.com to learn more subscribe to the podcast at thrive timeshow.com learn more about one-on-one business coaching at thrive15.com until next time as always three two one boom JT do you know what time it is? um 4 10. it’s it’s Tebow time in Tulsa, Oklahoma baby Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma during the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th, 2024. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Growth Workshop. Yes, folks, put it in your calendar this December, the month of Christmas, December 5th and 6th. Tim Tebow is coming to Tulsa, Oklahoma and the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive Business Growth Workshop. We’ve been doing business conferences here since 2005. I’ve been hosting business conferences since 2005. What year were you born? 1995. Dude, I’ve been hosting business conferences since you were 10 years old. And a lot of people, you know, have followed Tim Tebow’s football career on the field and off the field. And off the field, the guy’s been just as successful as he has been on the field. Now, the big question is, JT, how does he do it? Well, they’re going to have to come and find out, because I don’t know. Well, I’m just saying, Tim Tebow is going to teach us how he organizes his day, how he organizes his life, how he’s proactive with his faith, his family, his finances. He’s going to walk us through his mindset that he brings into the gym, into business. It is going to be a blasty blast in Tulsa, Russia. Folks, I’m telling you, if you want to learn branding, you want to learn marketing, you want to learn search engine optimization, you want to learn social media marketing. That’s what we teach at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive workshop. If you want to learn accounting, you want to learn sales systems, you want to learn how to build a linear workflow, you want to learn how to franchise your business, that is what we teach at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop. You know, over the years we’ve had the opportunity to feature Michael Levine, the PR consultant of choice for Nike, for Prince, for Michael Jackson. The top PR consultant in the history of the planet has spoken at the Thrive Time Show workshops. We’ve had Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, a company that creates apparel worn by celebrities all throughout the world. Jill Donovan, the founder of rusticcuff.com, has spoken at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshops. We have the guy, we’ve had the man who’s responsible for turning around Harley Davidson, a man by the name of Ken Schmidt. He has spoken at the Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops. Folks, I’m telling you, these events are going to teach you what you need to know to start and grow a successful business. And the way we price the events, the way we do these events, is you can pay $250 for a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. Yes! We’ve designed these events to be affordable for you and we want to see you live and in person at the two-day interactive December 5th and 6th Thrive Time Show Business Workshop. Everything that you need to succeed will be taught at the two-day interactive Thrive Time Show Business Workshop, December 5th and 6th in Tulsa, Oklahoma. And the way we do these events is we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a question and answer session. So that wonderful people like you can have your questions answered. Yes, we teach for 30 minutes and then we open it up for a 15 minute question and answer session. It’s interactive. It’s two days. It’s in Tulsa, Oklahoma. We’ve been doing these events since 2005 and I’m telling you folks, it’s going to blow your mind. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, the Thrive Time Show two day interactive business workshop is America’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshop. See the thousands of video testimonials from real people just like you who have been able to build multi-million dollar companies. Watch those testimonials today at Thrivetimeshow.com simply by clicking on the testimonials button right there at Thrivetimeshow.com. You’re going to see thousands of people just like you who have been able to go from just surviving to thriving. Each and every day, we’re going to add more and more speakers to this all-star lineup. But I encourage everybody out there today, get those tickets today. Go to thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s thrivetimeshow.com. And some people might be saying, well, how do I do it? I don’t know what I do. How does it work? You just go to thrivetimeshow.com. Let’s go there now. We’re feeling the flow. We’re going to thrivetimeshow.com. Thrive is cool. Again, you just go to thrivetimeshow.com. You click on the Business Conferences button, and you click on the request tickets button right there. The way I do our conferences is we tell people it’s $250 to get a ticket or whatever price that you can afford. And the reason why I do that is I grew up without money. JT, you’re in the process of building a super successful company. Did you start out with a million dollars in the bank account? No, I did not. Nope, did not get any loans, nothing like that. Did not get an inheritance from parents or anything like that, I had to work for it. And I’m super grateful I came to a business conference. That’s actually how I met you, met Peter Taunton, I met all these people. So if you’re out there today and you want to come to our workshop, again, you just got to go to thrivetimeshow.com. You might say, well, who’s speaking? We already covered that. You might say, where is it going to be? It’s going to be in Tulsa, Russell Oklahoma. It says Tulsa, Russell. I’m really trying to rebrand Tulsa as Tulsa, Russell. I’m sort of like the Jerusalem of America. But if you type in Thrive Time Show and Jinx, you can get a sneak peek or a look at our office facility. This is what it looks like. This is where you’re headed. It’s going to be a blasty blast. You can look inside, see the facility. We’re going to have hundreds of entrepreneurs here. It is going to be packed. Now, for this particular event, folks, the seating is always limited because my facility isn’t a limitless convention center. You’re coming to my actual home office and so it’s going to be packed. Who? You! You’re going to come. Who? You! I’m talking to you. You can get your tickets right now at thrivetimeshow.com and again you can name your price. We tell people it’s $250 or whatever price you can afford and we do have some select VIP tickets which gives you an access to meet some of the speakers and those sorts of things and those tickets are $500. It’s a two-day interactive business workshop over 20 hours of business training. We’re going to give you a copy of my newest book, The Millionaire’s Guide to Becoming Sustainably Rich. You’re going to leave with a workbook. You’re going to leave with everything you need to know to start and grow a super successful company. It’s practical, it’s actionable, and it’s TiVo time right here in Tulsa, Russelaum. Get those tickets today at Thrivetimeshow.com. Again, that’s Thrivetimeshow.com. Hello, I’m Michael Levine, and I’m talking to you right now from the center of Hollywood, California where I have represented over the last 35 years 58 Academy Award winners 34 Grammy Award winners 43 New York Times bestsellers I’ve represented a lot of major stars And I’ve worked with a lot of major companies And I think I’ve learned a few things about what makes them work and what makes them not work. Now, why would a man living in Hollywood, California, in the beautiful, sunny weather of LA, come to Tulsa? Because last year I did it and it was damn exciting. Clay Clark has put together an exceptional presentation, really life-changing, and I’m looking forward to seeing you then. I’m Michael Levine. I’ll see you in Tulsa. Thrive Time Show two-day interactive business workshops are the world’s highest rated and most reviewed business workshops because we teach you what you need to know to grow. You can learn the proven 13-point business system that Dr. Zellner and I have used over and over to start and grow successful companies. We get into the specifics, the specific steps on what you need to do to optimize your website. We’re going to teach you how to fix your conversion rate. We’re going to teach you how to do a social media marketing campaign that works. How do you raise capital? How do you get a small business loan? We teach you everything you need to know here during a two-day, 15-hour workshop. It’s all here for you. You work every day in your business, but for two days you can escape and work on your business and build these proven systems so now you can have a successful company that will produce both the time freedom and the financial freedom that you deserve. You’re going to leave energized, motivated, but you’re also going to leave empowered. The reason why I built these workshops is because as an entrepreneur, I always wish that I had this. And because there wasn’t anything like this, I would go to these motivational seminars, no money down, real estate, Ponzi scheme, get motivated seminars, and they would never teach me anything. It was like you went there and you paid for the big chocolate Easter bunny, but inside of it, it was a hollow nothingness. And I wanted the knowledge, and they’re like, oh, but we’ll teach you the knowledge after our next workshop. And the great thing is we have nothing to upsell. At every workshop, we teach you what you need to know. There’s no one in the back of the room trying to sell you some next big get-rich-quick, walk-on-hot-coals product. It’s literally, we teach you the brass tacks, the specific stuff that you need to know to learn how to start and grow a business. I encourage you to not believe what I’m saying, and I want you to Google the Z66 auto auction. I want you to Google elephant in the room. Look at Robert Zellner and Associates. Look them up and say, are they successful because they’re geniuses, or are they successful because they have a proven system? When you do that research, you will discover that the same systems that we use in our own business can be used in your business. Come to Tulsa, book a ticket, and I guarantee you it’s going to be the best business workshop ever. And we’re going to give you your money back if you don’t love it. We’ve built this facility for you, and we’re excited to see it. And now you may be thinking, what does it actually cost to attend an in-person two-day interactive Thrive Time Show business workshop? Well, good news, the tickets are $250 or whatever price that you can afford. What? Yes, they’re $250 or whatever price you can afford. I grew up without money and I know what it’s like to live without money. So if you’re out there today and you want to attend our in-person two-day interactive business workshop, all you got to do is go to thrivetimeshow.com to request those tickets. And if you can’t afford $250, we have scholarship pricing available to make it affordable for you. I learned at the Academy at King’s Point in New York, octa non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say. Whoa. Good morning, good morning, good morning. Harvard Keosak University Radio Show. Today I’m broadcasting from Phoenix, Arizona, not Scottsdale, Arizona. They’re close, but they’re completely different worlds. And I have a special guest today. Definition of intelligence is if you agree with me, you’re intelligent. And so this gentleman is very intelligent. I’ve done this show before also, but very seldom do you find somebody who lines up on all counts. And so Mr. Clay Clark is a friend of a good friend, Eric Trump. But we’re also talking about money, bricks, and how screwed up the world can get in a few and a half hour. So Clay Clark is a very intelligent man, and there’s so many ways we could take this thing. But I thought, since you and Eric are close, Trump, what were you saying about what Trump can’t, what Donald, who is my age, and I can say or cannot say. Well, first of all, I have to honor you, sir. I want to show you what I did to one of your books here. There’s a guy named Jeremy Thorne, who was my boss at the time. I was 19 years old, working at Faith Highway. I had a job at Applebee’s, Target, and DirecTV, and he said, have you read this book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad? And I said, no. And my father, may he rest in peace, he didn’t know these financial principles. So I started reading all of your books and really devouring your books. And I went from being an employee to self-employed to the business owner, to the investor. And I owe a lot of that to you. And I just wanted to take a moment to tell you, thank you so much for allowing me to achieve success. And I’ll tell you all about Eric Trump. I just want to tell you, thank you, sir, for changing my life. Well, not only that, Clay, you know, thank you, but you’ve become an influencer. More than anything else, you’ve evolved into an influencer where your word has more and more power. That’s why I congratulate you on becoming. As you know, there’s a lot of fake influencers out there, or bad influencers. Anyway, I’m glad you and I agree so much, and thanks for reading my books. That’s the greatest thrill for me today, not a thrill, but recognition is when people, young men especially, come up and say, I read your book, changed my life, I’m doing this, I’m doing this, I’m doing this. I learned at the academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. I learned at the academy at King’s Point in New York, acta non verba. Watch what a person does, not what they say.